


The Courtship Habits of Detectives

by sibley (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Codes & Ciphers, F/M, First Kiss, Flower Language, minor background roles are given to pigeons, this is some weird foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23833642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Getting a note stuck to one's door with a knife is not as exciting for most people as it is for Ralph.
Relationships: Ralph Dibny/Sue Dibny
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	The Courtship Habits of Detectives

**Author's Note:**

> All I am is a shill for Sue and sometimes Ralph. Thank you.

Ralph is not used to getting notes written in cut-out magazine letters stuck to the door of his office just beneath the textured-glass window with a knife.

It had been neatly folded when he pulled it down to read the words _“READ ME!”_ scrawled outside of it in red pen ink, and even now that it’s open the crease is still crisp and even. All of the letters had been glued down completely, not a single corner accidentally pressing up. Everything neat and tidy.

The inside of the note simply reads, _R. Dibny: go alone to Superiors gentlemen’s club tonight and be there by ten. Only wear neutral colours. Spencer has something you want. Extremely important to not get distracted._

It is absolutely in every way a trap, and Ralph is totally going to go anyway.

While he’s never actually been inside, he does know where Superiors is. It’s made it onto his map of notable Central City locations every time he redoes it, though to be fair that was mainly because it was the second in a franchise operation that had initially sprung up in Gotham and now had locations in Central (obviously), Metropolis, Star, and Midway City. Apparently, a superhero themed strip club can make it big just about anywhere.

Yeah, that’s right. A superhero themed strip club. As the initial owners of Superiors had discovered, that was something with a surprisingly large market.

He’s not an idiot, mostly, so he _does_ tell Cisco where he’s going. Probably also would’ve been a smart idea to tell him _why,_ because it is kind of weird to text your friend that you’re going to a strip club, but texting Cisco was enough of a good decision that he didn’t have to make any other ones for the rest of the night, because that was how it worked.

Getting outfit direction is exciting. Outfit direction means there must be more planned than just sending him to a strip club to ask around for someone. So changing into neutral tones it was, except he doesn’t technically _own_ any true-blue “neutral tones,” so he just decides to go with the most feasibly neutral purples and light pinks he can find. Those go with everything!

Cisco texts him back to ask why the hell he’s going to a superhero-themed strip club when he presumably gets enough of that—meaning the superhero stuff, not the strip club stuff, he is getting absolutely _none_ of that, thanks—already, and it’s also four in the afternoon. There’s enough time to respond that it’s because of a tip someone left for him. That’s technically close enough to the truth that he doesn’t have to feel bad about saying it.

And it may be four in the afternoon, but the note just said to be there before ten, and he knows for a fact that Superiors is open twenty-four hours a day, so now is as good a time as any to get over there. Even if he ends up having to wait several hours before “Spencer” shows up.

He just has to go over something first. The note _has_ to mean something beyond just what it says. It just has to. Nobody would go through all this trouble for it to be the only thing that _doesn’t_ mean something. Every single part of it has to matter, from the words to the cut-out letters themselves to the paper. 

Ralph manages to make it over to Superiors in fifteen minutes when he does eventually leave, get inside in less than three, and finish casing the place in two—it’s not _that_ big, or at least the place the customers isn’t. The bouncer is weirdly talkative but his name isn’t Spencer so he doesn’t matter.

It is very difficult to not get distracted.

It’s not the women themselves. It’s the way they’re dressed (“dressed”) as superheroes. Many of which he knows, or at least are people he’s met in passing. It’s more funny than anything else. He has _got_ to bring Barry back here at some point. That’s what’s distracting. The mental image of Barry seeing all of this for the first time. Or maybe not the first time. God knows what that guy gets up to.

The woman in green with long red hair seems the most approachable, so he waves her over. She’s not dressed as the Green Arrow, which is good because Ralph isn’t sure he’d be able to stop himself from laughing if she was, but the pattern is completely unfamiliar. Doesn’t Gotham have some green-themed villains? Not that she really looks like any of them, either. 

“Does someone named Spencer work here?” He asks when she comes, clearly looking him up and down like she knows he isn’t exactly there to buy a dance. He’s got some money in his pockets, he can probably pay her and Spencer _something_ for their time if they want.

The second he says Spencer’s name, her eyes light up and she smiles. It seems pretty genuine. They were probably told he was coming. That's good. It makes him less suspicious. “She sure does! Let me go get her! You can just wait right here!”

Spencer turns out to be a slender girl with short brown hair. She’s dressed as the Flash. Ralph does his very best not to think about it. He wonders if that specific detail was planned in advance, and he can't decide if he wants it to be or not.

All she does is hand him an envelope. He gives her the money in his pocket for it, even though he’s pretty sure nine dollars and fifty-eight cents isn’t going to change her life any time soon. Like the note stuck to his door, the envelope has the words _“READ ME!”_ scrawled on it, this time in yellow (actually, he’s pretty sure it’s written in highlighter), and contains only a few sentences written inside.

_Please leave Superiors and go three blocks North and five blocks East. At the end of the tallest wall there, there’s a fountain. Nobody should be around, but make sure no one is watching anyway or they might try to stop you. Somewhere inside the fountain is a gift. You should be able to find it._

It shouldn’t be this exciting to follow a bunch of little notes around the city, but it absolutely is. Ralph _does_ hope they get a little more difficult, though. The last two have just been instructions. Not all that much thinking involved, really. Treasure hunts were better when they involved riddles. 

The fountain mentioned in the note turns out to have a giant statue of a horse on top of it, which is pretty cool. He can see why the note said to make sure no one was watching, though, because the actual basin part of the fountain is about three feet deep, the bottom covered with glimmering nickels and pennies. If he were anyone else, he’d have to climb right into it.

At least the water being relatively clear plus it only being five-ish at night means he can spot what he’s looking for pretty quickly. Leaning right up against the block with the metal horse standing on it is a plastic bag with another note in it, this one in an envelope like the second one was. The letters are distorted, but he can already guess the words on the outside are the exact same, even if the color is now closer to orange than bright yellow.

Snagging it out of the water is relatively easy, and his heart literally soars when he sees that it’s blank. There may not be a riddle inside (yet!) but this is still much better than just a set of instructions. Invisible ink! It has to be invisible ink! If it’s not invisible ink, he’s already hyped himself up for it so he’s going to be very disappointed. 

To Ralph’s delight, the tiny lighter he accidentally stole from Cisco’s workshop a year and a half ago really _does_ illuminate words when he hopefully lifts it behind the paper just close enough that it won’t light the whole thing up. And while it isn’t a riddle, it _is_ in code! Which is just as good!

_Jvsbtibz Hclubl. Ovwl fvb'yl dpsspun av jspti. Nvvk sbjr dpao aoha. Qbza rllw nvpun bw. Uv zavwwpun buaps fvb nla av aol mpmao msvvy. Il jhylmbs uva av kpzabyi aol ipykz. Lzwljphssf dolu fvb mpyza zahya vba._

Unfortunately it’s a standard Caesar Cipher (so it’s technically not even a code, is it?), shifted right by seven, so it only takes a few minutes of copying things down while sitting semi-side-saddle on the horse in the middle of the fountain to crack it, but it’s still fun! Maybe the next one will be harder.

_Columbus Avenue. Hope you're willing to climb. Good luck with that. Just keep going up. No stopping until you get to the fifth floor. Be careful not to disturb the birds. Especially when you first start out._

Climb. Yeah, right. He’s not climbing straight up the side of a building when he has superpowers that make it so he never has to. (That doesn’t mean he doesn’t consider it, but it’s starting to get dark and he’s not positive he even knows the _mechanics_ of how to climb up a building with his hands, so superpowers it is!)

There’s only one building on the entirety of Columbus Avenue that’s even big enough to _have_ five floors, so it isn’t the most difficult search in the world. There are a half dozen or so flat sills that are currently home to many, many roosting pigeons, most of which are peering at the guy standing eye to eye with them, feet still planted on the ground.

_Be careful not to disturb the birds._

“Hi. I’m not here to bother you, I’m just trying to find something someone left for me,” Ralph says, waving awkwardly to one of them. It blinks at him with wide dark eyes before tucking its beak back down into the feathers of its chest. 

Judging by the windows, this is only floor three, so he keeps going up. He’s never really tried doing this with his legs before, but he’s done the reverse while being hung off a building by his ankles before he even had any control over his powers and it worked out fine then. However, he’s not sure which side of floor five he’s supposed to be looking at, so he awkwardly maneuvers around the whole building, scanning the ledges full of birds.

It’s getting even harder to see as the sky darkens, clouds awash with the sunset, so Ralph moves quicker, getting as close to the birds as he dares. Leaving them alone was a specific instruction. Why? What did they have to do with his clue? It had to have something to do with where they were roosting, didn’t it? The note had said to be especially careful when he was first starting to look. That _had_ to mean something about where they were positioned. But weren’t pigeon roosts random? How could someone make sure a bird went back to the exact perfect spot on the right day?

The nest is on one of the little platforms jutting out from floor five, nothing more than a patchwork of woven together ivy, lichen, and grasses all nestled in between spikes put out specifically to deter birds from settling there. The pigeon sitting on it is fat and fluffy, eyes reflecting the light from the buildings around it and from the dying light of the sun.

It coos at him a little when he reaches for it, standing up to swat at him with its wings as he pulls the clear plastic bag containing the paper out of its nest, a pair of surprisingly well-camouflaged big-eyed baby pigeons peeping at him when he does.

“Sorry for bugging you,” he apologizes once he manages to get a nice hold on it. The lettering on the envelope is in dark ink, but he can’t tell what color it is in the dim light. The pigeon slaps at him one more time before he heads back to the ground to take the note out and read it under the glow of one of the streetlights on his phone. 

Excitingly, the message on the outside—same as before, of course—is in red ink that’s the darkest color yet, and the inside is as blank as the last one. Ralph pulls out the lighter again, and this time a series of dots and dashes show up. A transcription of morse code! Even better!

_\--.- -.-. .- ... .... -.-. .--. --.. --- --.- -.-- -.-. .. .... ·-·-·- --- ..- .-- - .... .-- --. -.- --- .-- .... .-- -... ..- - -.-. ..-. -- -.-. .. .... ...- ... ..-. ... ·-·-·- ..-. .. -... - --- --. .... --··-- .-- .... ·----· --.. --.. .--. ... ..- -.-. -... ... -.- ...- ... -... .... ...- ... --. .. -... .-- --. ..- -.-. -... ... ·-·-·- -... -.-. .--. -.-. .-. -- -.- .-- --.. --.. --. ... ... -- -.-. .. -.-. -... .... ...- ... ..-. -.-. -.-. - ·-·-·- --- .... --.. ... --- --. .... --··-- -... -.-. .... .-- - -- -.-. .. ·----· ..-. ... --.- --- ..-. ... - .. --.. ·-·-·- .... ..-. -- -... -.-. .... .... -.-. .--. ..-. ... --- -.-- --- -... -- .... ...- .-- -... ..- ·-·-·- .-- ·----· --.. --.. .--. ... ..-. ... --- .-. -- -.- ...- ... -... -- -.-. .. --- ..-. ... ·-·-·- -.-. ..-. --- .... --.. ... --- --. .... .-- -.- .-- --.. --.. .--. ... .-- - -- -.-. .. ..- ... .... .... ...- ... ..-. ... .-- -... .... .-- .- ... ·-·-·- -... -.-. -.. ..-. -.-. .- .-- --. ... --. -.-. .... ...- ... ..-. -.- .-- --. ... ·-·-·-_

Which spells out… 

_Qcas hc Pzoqycih. O uwth wg kowhwbu tcf mci hvsfs. Fib togh, wh'zz ps ucbs kvsb hvs gib wg ucbs. Bcpcrm kwzz gss mci cb hvs fcct. Oh zsogh, bch wt mci'fs qofstiz. Hfm bch hc pfsoy obmhvwbu. W'zz ps fsorm kvsb mci ofs. Cf oh zsogh W kwzz ps wt mci ush hvsfs wb hwas. Bc dfcawgsg chvsfkwgs._

Another Caesar Cipher. He has to assume it’s also shifted seven, otherwise he’s never going to figure it out… because when he de-codes that one by moving it seven, it’s _still_ a Caesar Cipher. All he knows is that it says—

_Jvtl av Ishjrvba. H npma pz dhpapun mvy fvb aolyl. Ybu mhza, pa'ss il nvul dolu aol zbu pz nvul. Uvivkf dpss zll fvb vu aol yvvm. Ha slhza, uva pm fvb'yl jhylmbs. Ayf uva av iylhr hufaopun. P'ss il ylhkf dolu fvb hyl. Vy ha slhza P dpss il pm fvb nla aolyl pu aptl. Uv wyvtpzlz vaolydpzl._

And he doesn’t have the time to shift it by every single number he can think of. On a whim, he tries doing another round of seven, making it… technically a spin of fourteen? He’s pretty sure that’s how it works. Anyways, he gets a bingo, because now the note is actually legible. Three codes and a layer of invisible ink. All that unwound just for nine quick sentences.

_Come to Blackout. A gift is waiting for you there. Run fast, it'll be gone when the sun is gone. Nobody will see you on the roof. At least, not if you're careful. Try not to break anything. I'll be ready when you are. Or at least I will be if you get there in time. No promises otherwise._

Blackout. That’s a bar, and it’s not far from where he is now, but the sunset is almost done and he _cannot_ miss this chance. Who the hell knows when he’s going to get another one!

The roof. The note said to go to the roof when he gets to Blackout. If he can get to the roof of the building he was just looking at, he should be able to just step from place to place, couldn’t he? He’s never technically done that but it can’t be _too_ difficult. Especially when there’s this much at stake.

He can get to Blackout before it’s completely dark out. He _can._

The streets go by pretty quickly as Ralph moves from roof to roof. Bars, some restaurants, an office, a courthouse, another strip club, more restaurants. That kind of thing. But none of them are Blackout, even though he’s not positive he’ll be able to recognize it when he eventually gets to it because his eyes are so focused on the darkening horizon. He just knows these places _aren’t_ it.

(The first note had said to get to the strip club by ten. Of course it had been obvious that he was going to get going and end up there _way_ faster than that. Of course. Somehow, it was nice knowing someone other than Frost and potentially Cisco knew his habits so well.)

The air is getting colder by the second, but the smells from the restaurants are all mingling together and it isn’t anything more than chilly, so it’s easy to land on top of Blackout—recognizable for the people moving in and out, the sign in the window, and the gay pride flag the owner accidentally hung upside-down and will never get around to flipping in the window—and start combing the whole thing over for clues.

_A gift is waiting for you there._

Last time the “gift” was just the bag with the next clue, but there’s no note and no bag on the roof, and he can’t imagine it could have been blown off by the wind. That was too much of a rookie move. Besides, all the weird twisted metal and plastic trash shapes that had somehow gotten up here are blocking any breezes from about the height of his chest down. He already checked them for writing and found nothing. None of the plastic bags tangled in it are clear with envelopes inside them.

Ralph starts pacing back and forth. He got the right building. Where the hell is the gift?

Then he trips over something.

When he sits up, he sees that it’s a rock with a purple arrow pointed on it, innocuously pointing past his right shoulder at the other side of the roof. When he follows it to peer over the side, he doesn’t see anything. But it isn’t a coincidence. He knows it’s not. This isn’t the kind of thing that could be. There’s just _nothing there._

And then Ralph thinks about where the arrow would have been if he hadn’t tripped over it, and pivots to the left.

Right as the sun completely dips over the horizon, he sees the shadows. 

Evidently the rock with the arrow wasn’t the clue after all—the things he’d already dismissed as irrelevant because they didn’t have something written on them or tucked inside of them were.

For just a brief moment, he’d seen the words written in shadow on the wall, formed by the way the trash had been carefully put up and arranged. Three simple words and one symbol. 

_You know where._ With an arrow pointing deeper downtown.

Surprisingly, Ralph finds that he _does_ know where.

Luckily, he’s pretty sure the CC Mercantile Bank is only a fifteen-minute walk away.

Somehow, he never noticed that the building the bank is in has quite frankly excessively huge gargoyles overlooking from the roof until he actually got up there. They’re even big enough that Sue can sit cross-legged on the hunched back of one, hands in her lap and back straight while she watches him accidentally faceplant onto the edge of the roof when he loses his footing on the edge of the window halfway down which he’d been boosting himself from.

“You made it!” She smiles when he picks himself up off the dirty stone roof. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“Of course I came.” He rolls his eyes. “Someone has to stop your reign of terror over… somewhere, I assume.”

Sue puts one hand over her heart. “Aww. How did you know it was me?”

“Who else would stick a note to my door with a knife?” He crosses the building until he’s in front of her, still brushing dirt off his suit. She pouts and he sighs. “And I recognized your writing on the note as soon as I read it.”

“I used magazine letters and wrote on the outside with my non-dominant hand.” She cocks her head.

“Yeah, but you spelled ‘colors’ with a _u_ instead of just leaving it out. I read plenty of email copies you’d written leading up to your disappearance, you did that all the time in those.”

She leans forward a little. “I’m sure plenty of the people in this city spell it like that.”

So does he. “You also left a fingerprint.”

“I wore gloves and wiped the knife down before I stuck it in the door. Random brand, no way it could be traced back to me.” Sue is now wiggling just slightly in place with excitement. 

“The fingerprint was on the paper, not the knife.” It was a completely intact one, too. He’d made sure to remember where he’d touched it, so he’d known immediately when he’d checked for prints that it hadn’t come from him.

“I made sure my prints weren’t on file,” she counters. It’s true. There was never any reason for them to be, so he hadn’t thought all that much of it at the time, but after the incident inside the very bank they were standing on, he’d realized it was probably for much less innocent reasons.

Ralph lets himself be smug for a second, even though he knows he did exactly what she wanted him to do. He’s leaning forward even more now. “You left perfect ones on the diamond when you gave it back.”

Sue grins. “Attaboy.” She hops down from the gargoyle but continues to lean against it. “And did you figure out why I wanted you up here while you were at it?”

Ralph laughs. “You weren’t exactly being subtle with that one. Red rose, yellow pansy, jonquil, red carnation. Come _on._ The jonquil threw the pattern off a little, but I’m gonna guess that’s just because you couldn’t think of a way to naturally start a sentence with the letter _q_ so you had to use the cipher instead.”

“Guilty as charged, for once.” He rolls his eyes again and the smile on her face gets bigger. “What? I’ve never been charged for anything.” Sue stands up on her toes and lifts her chin. When he bends forward, they’re practically nose to nose. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

The kiss is awkward, of course. She’s over a foot shorter than him. He could pick her up, if he wanted. But instead half a second after it starts she gets a nice hold on his tie and keeps pulling down. In control again. Like she always is.

That should not be comforting. She’s a criminal. She seems to think that the only thing to do to solve a problem is commit as many crimes as humanly possible. But, well… it is. And he’s sure as hell not going to take the time to examine it now. There are better things to do.

“The one thing I can’t figure out,” he gasps out when she pulls back, “is the suit.” Well, he also doesn’t know how she met Spencer or how she picked the locations for his little scavenger hunt, but that’s not really relevant. “Why tell me what to wear at all? It never really mattered, right?”

“Oh, that?” She wraps her fingers in the tie a little more. “Part of it was because I was stuck on starting that sentence, but honestly?” Now if he tries to stand any straighter the tie is going to choke him. “I just wanted to see if you’d do it.”

The second kiss is just as good as the first.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Superiors is a real place in the DC Universe. I don't think it's a franchise establishment, so I'm pretty sure they're only in Gotham (and Spencer-who is a real character, as is her friend Liana who goes unnamed in this-definitely works at that one specifically, like the chatty bouncer I mentioned does (Eel is not my chosen talkative stretchy man)) and not expanded to multiple cities the way they are here, but it's otherwise canon. I get a kick out of that every day.
> 
> The flower language used here is:
> 
>  _Red rose:_ love and romance. It would be thornless, too (early love/love at first sight), but I wasn't sure how to fit that in.  
>  _Yellow pansy:_ several meanings, but popularly love and lust. Pansies have different meanings for different colors, but they overall symbolize thoughtfulness in the "I'm thinking of you" sense.  
>  _Jonquil:_ desire, though as always there are different rules for different versions.  
>  _Red carnation:_ strong love or admiration, depending on the shade. I'm using it to mean both.
> 
> Oh, and I didn't mention it because I couldn't figure out a way to work it into the story, but Sue is trans.
> 
> I'm augustheart on tumblr.


End file.
